0:00:08.134,0:00:10.400
MARK BRADFORD: You know [br]what? Let’s just put it up.

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SPEAKER: Then we adjust it later.

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BRADFORD: Yeah, and if it’s a [br]problem, all your fault. (LAUGHS)

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Never on me. (LAUGHS)

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SPEAKER: How do you do this [br]because these were advertisements?

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BRADFORD: Yeah, on the fences.

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BRADFORD: I only take the advertisements [br]that have to do businesses.

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After the riot, so many buildings were burnt [br]down that they put this fencing around it

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and so everybody starts to use [br]the fencing for these signs.

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But you see the same things [br]all the time in the ghetto.

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Cash. For your houses. It’s [br]like cash, we buy your houses.

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I like this one.

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Immigration papers in 30 days.

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How is this possible?

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Locks for hair. Black people and hair.

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I take twine, you know, string, [br]glue, all down around it

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and then I take the billboard paper [br]and I turn it on the back side,

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not the good side, but the back side.

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I lay it on and let it dry and [br]it like...and then I sand it.

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And some, I don’t, you [br]can’t...the language is all gone,

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a little bit gone, sometimes it works better.

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Just...yeah, it’s just information in the city.

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You see it all the time.

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Found some...oh that’s nice.

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Uh-huh. A head.

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Put that over there.

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My practice is both collage [br]and décollage at the same time.

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How would that look?

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Décollage. I take it away, and then [br]collage I immediately add it right back.

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Sometimes you have to not put stuff on top.

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You got to retrieve something [br]that’s under the bottom.

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Good. Where’s that S? I saved [br]it. Make sure the color is right.

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The line of my making or my art [br]practice goes back to my childhood,

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but it’s not an art background, [br]it’s a making background.

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Me making the sign of the prices [br]in my mother’s hair salon,

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I was in charge of that so I would do calligraphy.

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I learned how to...teach…

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I taught myself calligraphy [br]so I could make them very…

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very fancy on the wall.

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So the hand...the hand was very early in my work.

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Signage, texts, but not perfect.

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It always got a little slimmer at the end [br]because I wouldn’t measure it properly.

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But it worked out. She always [br]said oh next time, it’s okay.

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When I raise the prices [br]you’ll have another chance.

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Yeah, the make...I’ve always been a maker.

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In DADDY, DADDY, DADDY I was [br]using materials that had memory.

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Memory from working in the hair salon, [br]and I was using a lot of end papers.

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End papers are used when [br]you are doing a permanent.

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I was also thinking a lot about music at the time.

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Music fragments, so DADDY, DADDY, [br]DADDY kind of came out of that.

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BLACK VENUS was one of the map-like paintings.

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I was really thinking of mapmaking [br]and also the history of abstraction

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because in some ways I look at maps [br]as sort of these abstract grids. [br]

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Baldwin Hills is where the sort of black, [br]wealthy people of Los Angeles live.

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So I went driving around and came to an address,

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and I made up an imaginary [br]story about who lived there.

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I actually Googled and Google Mapped this address.

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Then it just became more and [br]more pushed into my imagination.

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I love soccer, and I decided [br]that I wanted to craft

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my own sort of imaginary league of players.

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GAME RECOGNIZES GAME,

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it was the largest piece [br]actually to date that I had made,

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and I love the fragile, heroicness of it.

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And it was all constructed of paper.

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It was the first time that I put a [br]painting and a sculpture in proximity,

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and I was trying to sort [br]of activate a third thing.

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LOS MOSCOS was really me directly wanting [br]to deal with issues of abstraction,

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modernism, abstract expressionism,

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it really kind of exploded for me.

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People say that they’re collages, I [br]just think that they’re paintings,

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you know it’s on canvas, it’s a painting.

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At CalArts, what I did [br]discover was bodies of ideas.

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I never knew what a postmodern condition was,

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I never heard of it.

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I never knew about Foucault [br]and bell hooks and Cornel West.

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I never read those type of writings,

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but I lived with people who [br]were living those type of lives

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so I remember coming home and telling my mother,

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oh you know you’re postmodern.

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She said oh, that’s sweet.

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So I...so I felt like I discovered friends [br]in these books, these writers, I felt…

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I discovered these revolutionary people

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that were doing these really revolutionary things,

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so it was the writings that got me

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really, really, really, really enthusiastic.

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I wanted to create the feeling of being [br]outdoors and indoors at the same time.

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As you walk in, one side is [br]just covered with information.

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On the opposite you have the [br]reflection of these merchant posters

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in the sort of mirror corridor.

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You have this sort of funhouse effect.

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This type of advertising which [br]mainly you see on cyclone fencing,

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has a relationship to the body.

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It’s about the conditions that are going on at

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that particular moment at [br]that particular location.

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You have “100% Roaches Gone” next [br]to “Are you a licensed barber?”

0:07:06.800,0:07:09.240
but if you put “My child says daddy” right next to

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“How to open a sober living [br]facility” and “Lifetime Indian hair”

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it’s really a story that starts to unfold.

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As you move down this corridor,

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you come into a smaller room and you hear music.

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(MUSIC)

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You hear people celebrating.

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There are two videos on opposite walls.

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One video is of the Martin Luther [br]King Day Parade in Los Angeles.

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And you see people who are [br]remembering this political figure.

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The other is of a marketplace in Egypt.

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This actual night market is only for Muslims.

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They’re on opposing walls but [br]they are facing each other.

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I go to the parade every year.

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Certain details, you start to see [br]over and over and over and over again.

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Such as the policing.

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There’s as much policing [br]of the parade as a parade.

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Every frame and it’s not that [br]I tried to put police in it,

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they were just in every frame.

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To see so many black bodies in [br]public space, it’s always political.

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Always a political condition.

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On the Cairo side, there was no police,

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there was no policing,

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these were just families enjoying themselves.

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But the Muslim body has become so politically [br]charged that the space therefore is charged.

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They’re both politicized sites.

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But at the same time they’re [br]about celebration as well.

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I noticed that my art practice [br]is very detail, labor intensive

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and I think that that’s a way of slowing [br]myself down so that I can hear myself think,

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so that I can hear the voices [br]a little bit more quiet,

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so I can hear maybe the decision that might [br]come through that’s a little less large.

0:10:23.600,0:10:31.051
That quieter voice has sometimes the more [br]interesting idea, if I can get to it.

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I still don’t know how this is going to hang.

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I still don’t even know…

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to me, I like it with the tacks in it,

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but well, maybe bright colored tacks.

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I’m not sure how it’s going to hang.

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I just thought to put it in [br]a box, send it down there,

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stack it up, and put it in a box.

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Making this piece for Brazil.

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And now it’s Brazil.

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I mean you’re making a [br]piece in your studio in L.A.

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and you’re thinking about Brazil, you know?

0:11:08.400,0:11:09.420
You never been to Brazil.

0:11:09.420,0:11:10.140
BRADFORD: That’s it?

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SPEAKER: Yeah.

0:11:10.760,0:11:12.725
BRADFORD: Well, I think [br]it...I think it kind of works.

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Ta da! (LAUGHS)

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PRACTICE was a video that [br]I did a couple years ago,

0:11:42.935,0:11:45.607
and I wanted to do a video [br]of me playing basketball.

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But I wanted to create a condition, a struggle.

0:11:50.161,0:11:54.171
I would create this huge antebellum [br]hoop skirt out of a Lakers uniform.

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My goal was to focus on dribbling [br]the basketball and making the shot,

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but obviously when you have an [br]antebellum skirt fanning out

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about four feet around you, [br]that's going to be difficult.

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And it was an incredibly windy day, one of those

0:12:15.440,0:12:18.920
Santa Anna, southern California, windy days

0:12:18.920,0:12:20.241
where everything was blowing.

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What it created was this billowing of the wind.

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It would catch underneath the dress.

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It became almost like I was floating.

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And I would fall and get up.

0:12:37.440,0:12:41.415
I would make the shot sometimes and [br]I wouldn’t and I would always get up.

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It was about roadblocks on every level,

0:12:47.920,0:12:55.138
cultural, gender, racial, [br]regardless that they’re there.

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It is important to continue.

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You keep going.

0:13:03.800,0:13:06.200
You keep going and so that’s what it was.

0:13:06.200,0:13:07.280
And I made the hoop.

0:13:07.280,0:13:08.440
I made the shot.

0:13:08.440,0:13:09.868
I always make the shot.

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Sometimes it takes me a [br]little longer to get there.

0:13:13.080,0:13:15.156
But I always make the shot.